Narcissus
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: Mirrors only show you what you want to see.


Visions in a mirror:

Romance is not made for her.

She attends school and realizes it. The other girls are eager enough to discuss whomever they find attractive. Zuko comes up in the conversations far more often than Azula can stomach. What do they see in him? He is a weakling. He is whimpering and obstinate and lazy. Azula is sure that they are drawn only to his power. If he was not a prince, they would not look twice his way. But the promise of a crown seems to be a strong lure.

She is still invisible. Mai and Ty Lee talk about it, more often than she can stomach. Mai's crush on Zuko is the most ludicrous of all. She is so composed, always so indifferent, and yet whenever his name is mentioned her cheeks flush pink. It disgusts Azula.

Her stomach twists when Mai and Ty Lee talk about boys. She doesn't understand the appeal. If it is supposedly about sex, then why don't they simply go and ask for what they want? All of the prancing, the dating, the courting rituals seem meaningless to her. They give each other flowers and she doesn't understand. What good is a lily as representative of love? If they wish for eternity, why give gifts that will be dead by morning? Why not gems or steel or cloth, gifts that will persist long after love and life are both dead?

"You're an idiot, Mai," she finally snaps, leaving both of her friends behind. They stare after her but do not understand the outburst. She herself does not understand. Her time is best consumed with thinking about fire and power and a crown.

But the treated glass of the mirror tells her visions she enjoys, so she touches its surface. She caresses the curves of her body's reflection. The glass is smooth and therefore her skin must be smooth. The mirror does not lie. Her smile is there, and her golden eyes, enchanting. Alluring. She falls right in.

Romance is not made for her.

They say that Ozai used to be a great romantic. All the oldest nobles at the court reminisce about how Ozai wooed Ursa, granddaughter of the traitor Avatar. He brought her exotic pets and exotic dresses, spoils from the Earth Kingdom. He brought her kisses and lust, and the whole Fire Nation fell in love with their young, handsome prince. Rumors that Ursa's stomach grew round before the wedding proliferate, though Ozai does his best to quash them.

The stories, predictably, are nonsensical even to a young Azula. She sees her father and mother together and sees no great romance there. Ozai holds Ursa's wrist too tightly and leaves his fingerprints on her skin. He looks past her as if she is only a statue, part of the decorations. Ursa burns important documents in her brazier and tears apart her husband's favorite robes. At night, Azula sits outside of their room and can hear crying. The sound sends goosebumps over her skin.

Is this what romance is supposed to be? she wonders. Like a fight, push and pull, give and take, starting with happiness and ending in blood? If her parents are examples of a great romance, then surely the endeavor has little to offer.

Ursa leaves, and the nobles say nothing of what has become of this relationship. Ozai assumes the throne, and they sing his praises. Azula romances herself with visions of power. Her fists are alight with flame and she knows that this is what happiness is. This is her calling. It is what makes her blood feel hotter than the sun, hotter even than bending.

She loves the new royal seal that she wears in her hair. When she passes a mirror, she stops to admire it. The servants have taken note but they do not comment. They do not ask the princess why they must wipe the mirror clear of fingerprints each morning, or why she rages if its surface is not clean.

Romance is not made for her.

Her father claims her, this maker of great romance, but his intrusion between her thighs says nothing of love. It is only pain and she comes out bleeding. The blood is hers and tastes good on her fingers, but this is her love of herself, not the love between them. There is only the obligation of daughter to father, and now he has soiled that with his own selfish whims.

Time passes. She plays his game. She smiles when he wants her to and does as he commands her. They trade touches and incestuous kisses. After years, harsh years, she derives pleasure from it. But these are only the hollow gains of physical satisfaction, and they are always laced with bruises. Ozai is not interested in romancing her. He is interested only in the image of a woman long lost, who comes before him again in the chance form of their daughter. He is interested only in climax and eruption. The rest is inconsequential. He does not give her gifts and he does not give her flowers. When he tells her he loves her, he whispers the wrong name into her ravaged neck.

A public execution. A traitor caught in their midst. Azula slips from the palace to see the event. She blends into the crowd and watches the man who has been slipping secrets to the Earth Kingdom. Her heart beats too fast as he is forced to lower his neck onto a block of wood. Something that has never awakened before thrums between her legs. When the executioner lowers the sword with an all-too-audible sound of the crunching of bone and sinew, Azula feels the noise go through her whole body. Watching blood stream from the corpse makes her mind come alive. This is surely wrong, but it must be a thousand times less sinful than what she does with her father, so she does not condemn herself.

Later in the night she stands naked in front of the mirror. She hates the scars that her father has put on her skin, disturbing its smoothness. She lowers a hand to her clit and thinks of what she has witnessed. She does not close her eyes even in climax but watches her flushed cheeks rise and fall, watches her golden eyes glimmer.

Romance is not made for her.

She meets her friends again. Still Mai hosts an idiotic crush on her brother. Azula hates that. She wants to crush it out of her, burn it out of her. She does not want them to be happy. She does not want them to imagine happiness or even dream of it. If she cannot have it, they cannot have it.

And something stirs again as she watches Ty Lee stretch and move, her curves long and nimble. She kisses the acrobat to see what it tastes like, to see whether it's different from kissing her father. It goes too far. The coitus leaves her unsatisfied. And now Ty Lee is believing in an alternate reality, one where she can be wooed by kisses and gentle words. Azula accepts the gifts but returns none of the emotion. She is fire and stone. She is power. The thrill of violence, of every wound inflicted by her fingers, arouses her more than Ty Lee will ever be able to.

On Ember Island she plays at it. She reverts, briefly, to childhood, recalls seeing all of the girls acting the same way she pretends to. When a boy whose name she can't be bothered to remember kisses her, she marvels at how similar it is to Ozai's kiss. Lips are all the same. Bodies are for bruising, not for loving. She scares him off and his house burns.

The mirror loves her. She spends hours in front of its gilded expanse. She applies makeup and takes it off, puts it on and takes it off. She touches her fingers to their reflected counterparts. She presses her body against its surface. She meets her own eyes and kisses herself. It is so smooth and so cold. It is infinitely more pleasurable than the other kisses she has shared. Her hair tickles her skin.

The mirror does not lie to her. It presents her with a truth she loves. Its understanding of her is complete. She whispers poison in her own ears and imagines them as coming from the glassy surface. She hates herself, but she loves the self trapped on the other side.

Romance was not made for her.

They have gone, all of them. Everyone has become a victim of the war she has waged on herself. Zuko is a traitor and Mai and Ty Lee are rotting in prison. None of it matters. What matters is her own failure. The perfect self in the mirror laughs at her, the imperfect one trapped outside of it. Its approval has gone, and Azula can no longer kiss the glass. She is breaking apart. Her hand mirror does not show her face. The smaller mirror in the anteroom shows her old and decaying, coming apart at the edges. She is falling apart. But when she looks in the mirror that has been her constant companion, she is still there, still perfect, round red lips smiling.

The mirrors are not lying. Mirrors do not lie. They are the one constant in her life. If they show her breaking apart, then she must be breaking apart. Her father has left her. Her mother has left her. But the mirror is still there, still there, still there...

She hates its judgmental stare. She reaches for her scissors and slices through her hair. The reflection is no longer perfect. Its bangs are jagged too. It has lost its beauty. It is reflecting her imperfections. Everything will be all right, because the mirror does not lie.

There is someone else in the mirror.

Her mother has corrupted its surface.

Azula cannot comprehend this. It is lying to her. Ursa is gone, is dead, is somewhere else. She isn't there. But the mirror is telling her that Ursa is there. It is the mirror, not her. She is fine. The glass is trying to deceive her.

She destroys the mirror.

She was not made for romance.


End file.
